UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Palestinian People

It was, therefore, not “who invented hummus” that caused me to react. Rather, it was Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian land, eradication of their presence, and now the effort to be the sole claimants of their culture that prompted my response to Ray’s “Israeli food” tweet. This was cultural appropriation by conquest… And so what troubled me then, and still troubles me, are the parallels with the Native American experience. Their land had been taken, their history and rights were denied, and now their culture was claimed by the very people who dispossessed them. This according to Article 8 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is termed “genocide”.

A United Nations report published two years ago warned that Gaza would become unlivable by the year 2020, but a new UN report finds that the deterioration in conditions there has worsened faster than expected. The Red Cross has also warned that a “systemic collapse of an already battered infrastructure and economy is impending.” In a recent article, Dr. Alice Rothchild, a physician who is active with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP,) wrote:

The steady deterioration of the lives of the people in Gaza in the face of occupation, siege, internal discord, and the willful blindness of the international community can only be described as a not so slow genocide that is obvious to anyone who chooses to see.

JVP, including the group’s Rabbinical Council, has consistently expressed solidarity with the people of Gaza. Progressive Jewish rabbis have joined Palestinian Christians in calling on U.S. churches to take meaningful actions to protest Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. A number of U.S. churches have already answered the Palestinian Christian call— contained in the historic Kairos Palestine document, for solidarity with the Palestinian people.

It is now high time for U.S. church leaders to head the call of their Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters and take a courageous public stand for peace and justice in the Holy Land.

“There is a conversation to be had, but if you want to have it in an open arena, you- if you support the Israeli governments policies in the West Bank and with their bombing of Gaza, in what looks like a sort of creeping genocide to those of us who think…- you need to argue your position.”